CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE (19 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

We were
in a cell. The floor was cold, quite a feat in a place like this. I opened my
eyes slowly and was careful not to move the rest of my body. No one needed to
know that I'd come to, not yet. I had to make use of whatever advantage I had,
no matter how small.

Cade was laying in the ground in
front of me, breathing in shallow, ragged breaths. I could see the telltale
froth of blood at the corners of his lips, and knew if he didn't get medical
attention soon it would be too late to save him.

I studied his face, and for a moment
I thought there was a chance that he was playing possum too. The wound was
clearly all too real, but beneath his eyelids I could just make out the shine
of his pupils. In fact, had he just winked at me?

There was someone else in the cell.
It took me a moment to realize who it was, since I’d only met him a couple of
days before.

Jonathan. Poor, sweet Jonathan.

He was sitting upright in the corner
of the cell, staring blankly out beyond the bars at whatever was happening out
there.

A moment later, I realized that I
could hear Thrace's voice. It was badly muffled, as if through more than one
set of walls. I watched Jonathon for a minute or two, trying to gauge by the
way he was acting whether we were being observed.

Finally, I risked it.

“Jonathan,” I whispered, as softly as
I could.

No answer. He didn't so much as
flinch. I was sure I was loud enough for him to hear me, but that didn't mean
that I could reach him in whatever place his mind had gone.

“Jonathan,” I tried again, daring to
whisper with a little more fierceness.

This time his gaze flicked in my
direction for a moment, and when he saw that my eyes were open I watched as he
came back down to earth.

“Are we alone?” I asked him softly.

He shook his head ‘no’ slowly and
after a moment's hesitation reached out a hand and pointed it at Cade. Right. Of
course. Just my luck. Captured by a maniac and held prisoner with a guy whose
head was permanently in the clouds.

There was nothing I could do. I’d
have to risk turning over and seeing for myself. As slowly and gingerly as I
could, I turned my head to look the other way.

It seemed we really were in a cell.
Thick, black bars surrounded us in a rough rectangle. Even from here I could
see how corroded they were with age, but the floor was newly poured concrete.
Maybe someone like Cade could break the bars, but they were dug firmly into the
new ground and I didn't have think I'd have the strength to do it.

And even if I tried, it would hardly
be silent. I could hear Thrace a couple rooms away talking to someone, and I
had to assume that the other person in the room with him was one of his guys.
That left the other somewhere unaccounted for. Maybe he was standing guard
nearby, and maybe he was on patrol around the fort.

I had no way of knowing. It was pretty
dark in here and I let my eyes adjust to the light. I scanned the room and saw
nothing other than other empty cells. No bored guard leaning against the wall,
and no security cameras whirring away as they turned to and fro to watch the
room.

I had to sit up if I was going to see
anything else. I didn't have a choice. Cade was badly injured, and if I didn't
at least find a way to keep pressure on the wound then there was no telling
what would happen to him.

When I moved and no one yelled at me,
I got a little more bold and crept over to Cade's still form. He didn’t move
when I touched him, and I carefully pulled his shirt up past the wound. Maybe
I'd been wrong about seeing his eyes shine at me before, because Cade surely
had to hurt a hell of a lot and he didn't so much as flinch.

It was a relatively clean cut, at
least. It was still losing blood freely, and I could clearly see the rough edge
of the flesh the serrated blade had damaged him on the way out. I wasn't a
doctor, and I didn't know how much time had passed, but I told myself that, since
he wasn't dead yet he still had a chance if I could just get the bleeding
stopped.

I looked around the cell for
something to use as a bandage and didn't find anything. Getting desperate now,
I did the first thing I could think of. I took off my shirt, and then took off
my bra.

The bra itself wasn't very padded. I
never really needed much more impact in that area then God had already given
me, which meant it wouldn't be very absorbent. Perfect for what I needed to do.
I folded in half and pressed the cups to his wound, then grabbed the end of his
own shirt and rolled it back down over the bra before tying it tight at the
bottom hem.

Sure, he looked like those
teenyboppers you see in the spring break videos who'd thrown hasty knots into
their shirts so that they could expose their midriffs without daddy complaining
about the clothing they were wearing on the way out of the house, but it was
better than nothing.

Once I'd done all I could for him, I
looked over Jonathan.

The guy’s eyes were huge. For an instant
I got worried that he'd seen or heard someone coming, but that was before I
realized what he was focused on.

I couldn't help but give him an
embarrassed little grin as I plucked my shirt up off the ground and put it back
on. “Sorry about that. I wasn't sure what else to do…”

“Breasts,” he said, in the tone of
voice I imagine most men's inner narrative takes when they see a woman naked.

“Yes,” I agreed. “But we've got
better things to worry about right this second, right?”

“Bosoms.”

Oh God
, I thought to myself.
I've broken him
. “Jonathan, I need you
to come back to me. We've got to get Cade out of here if he's going to make it,
that means-“

“Tits. Knockers. Fun bags.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Am I going
to have to get up off my ass and go all the way over there just to slap you?”

He shook his head forcefully. “No
ma'am.”

“Good. Now focus. Were you already
here when they brought Cade and I?” I asked him, absently rubbing the egg on
the back of my head Thrace had given me when he coldcocked me with the shotgun
butt. My vision wasn't blurry and I certainly wasn't tired, but that didn't
mean that I was running at a hundred percent yet. I still felt fuzzy, as if I were
hearing things on an old transistor radio speaker instead of as they were, but
that seemed to be clearing up as well.

“Mammaries,” Jonathon whispered,
although it looked like he was getting the last of the words out of his system
last. “Sorry, Ms. Rachel. I've just never seen…”

“That's okay, Jonathan. I'm more than
happy to be the first pair of breasts you've laid eyes on. For now though,
let's try and move past that and start trying to work out how to get out of
here.”

“I was here when they brought you,”
he said in answer to my earlier question. Twenty minutes or so ago.”

I nodded. Not too bad. Especially not
since I'd been expecting him to say I was out for hours and hours. Twenty
minutes in here meant Cade had been stabbed half an hour or so ago. Bad, but it
certainly could've been worse.

I checked his bandage again before
getting to my feet. “And which of them has the key to the cell,” I asked as I
reached forward and quietly put some pressure on the door to make sure was
locked.

It was, course. In my mind’s eye I
was trying to work out a plan, though the only one I could come up with
involved a rather roughshod attempt at seduction which ended in Jonathan and I
doing a bad job of trying to either steal or bludgeon the key out of a man who
could take both of us in a fight with one arm tied behind his back.

And then I smiled. It was the
biggest, most genuine smile I'd had in a while. It felt like the weight of the
world had slipped from my shoulders for a moment, because I remembered who I
was locked in the cell with.

“Jonathan?”

“Yes, Ms. Rachel?”

“Be a dear and unlock the cell door
for me, won't you?”

“Sure thing,” he said, practically
jumping up off the bench he was sitting on and coming to stand beside me to
inspect the lock.

“Do you have your tools?”

He shook his head sadly. “They know
me, Ms. Rachel. They searched me and took my best lock picks away before they
put me in here.”

“Shit.”

“You should've seen them! They were
gorgeous, finely tuned, perfectly machined. Why, just the weight of them in my
hand made the world feel like it made sense. All they left me with was this
cheap, Chinese-made piece of junk. I don't even know why I carry them around,
to be honest. It's hardly worthy of the name lock pick. But it's small, is
light, and they missed it.”

I would've screamed for joy if it
wouldn't have brought Thrace down on our heads, and I would've hugged him, if
it wouldn't have meant I'd probably short-circuit him by letting him feel my
breasts through our shirts.

Instead, I reached out and squeezed
his arm with my hand and gave him a winning smile that he more than deserved. “Get
us out of here, huh?”

He turned to the lock and worked his
magic. Ten seconds later, with a squeaking hinge that stopped my heart, he
slowly pushed the door to the cell open. “There you go,” he said, clearly
feeling like the hero in the story going on in his own head. “One unlocked
door, as requested.”

“Good work, Jonathan,” I said. “I
mean it. You're a lifesaver!”

“Maybe,” he said. I could see that
the open door was having the opposite effect on him as it was on me. Jonathan
much preferred being locked in somewhere, and now that we were free his safety
blanket was gone. “But now what do we do?” he asked.

“Now, you stay here and make sure Cade
keeps breathing while I sneak out there and try to find a way out.”

He nodded. I didn’t expect him to be
a hero, and he’d done more than enough getting the door open.

There was only one door leading in
toward the cells, which I guess I should be thinking of as a jail at this point.
It connected to the rest of the warehouse or fort or whatever it was supposed
to be now by a single narrow hallway. I opened the door and crept down the
hallway as quietly as I could, only glancing back once to make sure that
Jonathan was watching over Cade. He was, though he was biting his lip and
looking worried.

Not a good sign. I’d have to do this
fast if we were going to be able to make it back to civilization before
whatever internal bleeding Cade had was the end of him.

I realized with a sick twist in my
gut that Thrace's voice had stopped. How long ago? Seconds? Minutes? I couldn't
remember. For the life of me I couldn't recall how long it been since I last
heard him speak in whatever room he was in, and the hairs on the back of my
neck went up as I imagined him holding his breath somewhere, listening for my
approach.

When he didn't burst around the
corner to find me in the middle of escaping, I decided I better put the pedal
to the metal. Waiting wasn’t going to help anyone, especially if I did it in a
narrow little hallway that only led back to the cell I had just escaped from.

No, I had to hurry. I pushed myself
to go as quickly as I could, passing doors that looked locked or rarely used
and only stopping when I found one that seemed like it might lead somewhere
worthwhile.

I tried the doorknob. The handle spun
in my hand, and before I knew exactly what was happening I was staring
face-to-face with Thrace. For the second time in as many days our noses were
almost touching, only this time I didn't have my Grandmother's front door
between us.

He was shocked as well. I watched in
slow motion as his pupils dilated and his nostrils flared. Thrace reached out
for me and I dodged his hand, ducking beneath his arm and trying to get past
him.

I was running solely on instinct. If
I'd have been thinking my way through this, I would have realized that running
wouldn't help Cade little bit. Even if I did manage to get free, he'd be a goner
before I could bring back help.

Thrace's foot shot out and tripped me
and I went sprawling to the concrete, my knee coming down so painfully it made
me cry out.

“Clumsy,” he said, and before I could
scramble to my hands and knees his steel toed boot crashed into my side and
knocked the breath from me. I folded over and clutched my stomach, fighting to
breath. Thrace grabbed a handful of my hair and hauled me roughly to my feet. “Enough
of this shit,” he told me in my ear.

“Let me go,” I managed to cough out. “You
can have your warehouse. You can have all of the properties, if you want them.
I don't care. I'll sign them over to right now.”

He shook his head and I felt the
barrel of the shotgun in my side. “Too late for that. It’s time for plan B. Once
you go missing, they'll look for you in vain. After a couple of months of not
finding a body, it won't take much to declare your dead. Everything in your
name, this warehouse included, will go up on the auction block and I assure
you, the Gravediggers Union won't be outbid.”